


As He Was

by thanatoph0bia



Category: Transformers Animated (2007)
Genre: Character Study, Empurata, Gen, shadowplay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-26
Updated: 2018-04-26
Packaged: 2019-04-28 02:40:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14439714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thanatoph0bia/pseuds/thanatoph0bia
Summary: sometimes I think about what if tfa shockwave had also been sentator shockwave and since ratchet’s magnets remind me of windcharger so I wrote this





	As He Was

**Author's Note:**

> as usual, lots of headcanon

Contrary to popular belief, Shockwave did have feelings. What he lacked, however, was the ability to process them. Anyone who got their servos on a copy of his processor scan could see the dark part of his emotional center, the part that prevented him from interpreting emotional data sent to the processor by the spark, and prevented his spark from interpreting the emotional data he received from others via expression, body language, and EM field. Whatever emotional data Shockwave was able to comprehend had to be interpreted by his processor, and that was no stand-in for a spark’s intuition.

However, seeing this did provide Ratchet with the realization that Shockwave did make sense. Learning that what had happened to Shockwave was not the same as what Perceptor had done to himself made _sense_. It made sense why he was so prone to outbursts of various natures, because where logic would indeed favor his dedication and academic prowess, it surely wouldn’t have favored sulking, griping, or relentless sarcasm. After all, Shockwave’s flair for the dramatic was hardly logical.

And in that way, Shockwave really reminded him of the Senator.

The Senator. Ratchet couldn’t bear to think of this facsimile as the mech he had known. The mech who had encouraged him to pursue medicine, the mech who had fought tooth and nail to get him reformatted. The mech who had told him “ _Being forged and being an expert is the greatest example of the correlation/causation fallacy there is_.”

The idea that this monstrosity (who had hacked Arcee, no less) now occupied the Senator’s frame was utterly repulsive. It was incomprehensible that this plain, quiet mech, was one he once knew to be as loud, as brash, and as bright as they come. But upon further inspection, the qualities that made Shockwave _Shockwave_ were still there, they were just mutated through a maelstrom of misguided reason.

Shockwave’s inability to tolerate injustice was still there, it was only filtered through a belief that Megatron would bring an end to the injustice. His glib (now haughty), his passion (now ), and his spontaneity (now discipline) were all still present.

The only thing missing was the empathy. He hadn’t realized how fundamental it had been. Simulated sympathy was no replacement for genuine empathy. The proof was in his servos.

But for as glorious a revelation as that was, it was still fundamentally disheartening. The stinging pain Ratchet felt looking at the processor scan confirming what he already knew but could never bear to acknowledge: that the Senator was well and truly offline.

A prisoner of its own backwards rationale, that cold, calculating processor was the only thing standing between the universe and a swirling spark full of a compassion it desperately needs. And that, Ratchet thinks, is perhaps the most offense part of his disfigurement, and the cruelest disservice that had been done to Shockwave’s legacy.


End file.
